Kasab Hanging Sparks Debate on Death Penalty

Supporters of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena party hung an effigy of executed gunman Ajmal Kasab in Mumbai, Wednesday.

While India backs the death penalty, it’s a sentence that is rarely implemented.

Over the past 20 years, only three people have been executed in India, although the list of those of death row is at least 435, according to Amnesty International.

This is in line with India’s stated position, as spelled out in a 1982 Supreme Court ruling, that the death penalty is a punishment that should only be handed down in the “rarest of rare” cases.

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Mohammed Ajmal Kasab’s case qualified. As the only surviving militant of the terrorist attack that killed more than 160 people in Mumbai four year ago, many in India welcomed his hanging on Wednesday morning.

This was the first time the death penalty had been implemented in India since 2004, when a man was executed for raping and murdering a teenage girl. The last person to be sent to the gallows before then, in 1995, was Auto Shankar, a Chennai serial killer.

Mr. Kasab’s hanging rekindled a debate on whether India should keep the death penalty or do away with it.

Indian foreign minister Salman Khurshid on Wednesday night spoke of his country’s conflicted stance on the issue.

“Instinctively, we are against the death penalty,” said Mr. Khurshid, addressing a group of foreign journalists in New Delhi. “It’s a difficult decision to execute anyone,” he added.

But he defended the hanging of Mr. Kasab, describing it as a “somber duty” the government had to perform for its citizens.

On the broader question of whether India should keep the death penalty, Mr. Khurshid said this is a decision New Delhi will take “in due course.” India backed the death penalty at the United Nations on Monday, along with other countries that still carry out capital punishment.

In editorials Thursday, newspapers in India took varying positions on the issue. The Hindu made it clear it is opposes state executions, whatever the crime. “We oppose it for ordinary killers and mass murderers, communal pogromists as well as terrorists like Muhammad Ajmal Amir Kasab,” the paper said in an editorial.

“No loss of human life, however despicable the individual might have been, ought to be a reason for celebration. Instead, this should be a time of national reflection: reflection about crime, about punishment and about that cherished bedrock of our republic, justice. For several reasons, the hanging of Kasab is at most a crude approximation of this quality, more closely resembling an act of vengeance,” the Hindu added.

The Times of India said that while it “doesn’t enthusiastically endorse capital punishment” it supports it in cases like Mr. Kasab’s. “He has been accorded due process of law and his culpability for heinous crimes – which certainly fall into the ‘rarest of rare’ category for which capital punishment can be awarded – has been proved beyond a shadow of doubt,” the editorial said.

Human rights groups Thursday renewed calls for India to end capital punishment. “The Indian government should immediately reinstate its moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement. Meenakshi Ganguly, the South Asia head of the New York-based group, described Mr. Kasab’s hanging as a “step backwards for India’s justice system.”

The question many are now asking, is whether India will go through with the executions of several other high-profile death row prisoners.

On top of the list is Mohammad Afzal Guru, who was sentenced to death for his role in the 2001 attack on India’s Parliament. For the Hindustan Times, “It now seems unlikely that leniency can be shown to him if the Kasab precedent is anything to go by.”

Mr. Guru’s request for pardon, sent years ago, is among those pending at the president’s office. But Mr. Kasab’s case was less controversial, domestically, than that of Mr. Guru. Mr. Kasab was a confessed and convicted terrorist, and he was Pakistani.

Mr. Guru is an Indian citizen and, in his home state of Jammu and Kashmir, even politicians are divided over whether to support his clemency plea.

In the Afzal Guru case, “the argument is that Kashmiris won’t like it,” says B.G. Verghese, a political analyst as the Delhi-based Center for Policy Research. “This has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with politics,” says Mr. Verghese.

Mr. Guru, a former member of a separatist movement in the Indian region of Kashmir, denies wrongdoing and has claimed earlier confessions to police were made under duress.

Other death row prisoners include Balwant Singh Rajoana, a Sikh separatist convicted for his involvement in the murder of Punjab’s chief minister in 1995. His execution, which was delayed in March after a mercy plea was submitted on his behalf, was opposed by Sikh groups. Earlier this year, India’s Supreme Court criticized Punjabi political parties for politicizing the issue.

In Tamil Nadu, many are against the death penalty for three men convicted for their role in the 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minsiter Rajiv Gandhi. The state’s chief minister, J. Jayalalithaa, in the past has declined to take a position on the issue. “Again, it’s Tamil Nadu politics,” says Mr. Verghese on why the three men – one Indian and two Sri Lankans – haven’t yet been executed. Their case is still going through India’s court system.

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